“And God heard the voice of the boy …†Genesis 21:17a
Call me Ishmael. With these three words, Herman Melville begins his 19th century novel Moby Dick and introduces the man who will be telling his story of the adventures at sea. For Melville, naming his narrator after the biblical character Ishmael who was sent forth into the wilderness has multiple meanings. Both “Ishmaels†find themselves alone in a wilderness of sorts, both discover water as the source of life and both struggle as outsiders of the religious orthodoxy of their day.
The Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick is an inlander of Massachusetts. Ishmael believes he will find the source of life, peace and things “everlastingly remote†at sea. What follows is the story of the Pequod's voyage and a complete picture of the 19th century whaling industry.
However, on another level, Melville has recreated the society of American culture within this community of whalers. Moby Dick, when understood as a parable, reveals the painful truth about mid-19th century America, which promised human equality but advocated slavery, racial exploitation and exclusion of women. Within the novel, Melville reverses the social order of the whaler society implying equality of all humanity and exposing the hypocrisy and oppression within the white, Christian, American culture.
The rise of white Christian nationalism today resembles the hypocrisy and oppression of days gone by. Once a dominantly white culture, as we become a more diverse country, millions of white Americans are in a panic fearing they will lose their privilege. Merging American civic identity with Christian tradition, White Christian nationalism asserts that the U.S. was founded as and must remain a Christian nation, that white Christians hold a divinely favored status and that the nation's laws should reflect conservative values. This movement firmly believes the American way of life is under threat from secularism, demographic shifts and the inclusion of non-Christian or non-white groups. The equal rights of refugees, immigrants, women, the LGTBQ community and people of color are endangered by this movement.
This week our country celebrates Juneteenth which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, specifically marking the day June 19, 1865. when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger landed in Galveston and read General Orders, No. 3, which stated that all enslaved people were free. While President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation technically freed enslaved people in Confederate states on Jan. 1, 1863, it took two-and-a-half years and the arrival of the Union Army to enforce the news in Texas. The following year, newly freed people in Texas began organizing annual celebrations on June 19 known as “Jubilee Day,†which eventually spread across the country. Texas became the first state to make it an official holiday in 1979, and on June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the federal holiday into law.
As we gather to commemorate Juneteenth this week, may it be a poignant reminder of the injustices in which our Christian forefathers and foremothers colluded to deny God's children their song of freedom, dignity, respect and the pursuit of happiness. May we ask forgiveness for sins of the past and all the ways we continue to treat others with disrespect, cruelty and injustice.
Ishmael means “God hears.†The story of Ishmael highlights how quickly religious people come to understand God's gifts of grace as legal rights of the chosen. Yet, the story of Ishmael also affirms that God hears the voice of those endangered by the establishment. These are the stories of faith and grace that teach us the most about the character of God.
The Rev. Dr. Blythe Denham Kieffer served as pastor and head of staff at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Springfield, from Oct. 1, 2013, to Oct. 1, 2025.
This article appears in June 11-17, 2026.
